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Tuesday 25th October, 2005 Posted:
16:31 CIT (21:31 GMT)
A Grand Cayman Blue Iguana was rescued from certain death in the
Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park last week, after it was spotted in trouble by a Park employee.
Blue Iguana Warden Chris Carr was called and found the female iguana,
known as Sapphire, with a thatch snare tightly wrapped around her neck. The iguana had evidently broken free after someone
had attempted to snare her.
The noose was tight enough to block swallowing which would have led
to a slow, painful starvation. Mr. Carr, a trained medical technician employed in the Blue Iguana Recovery Program, captured
the iguana and removed the constricting remains of the snare.
Sapphire is making a good recovery. Blue iguanas are one of the main
attractions of the Botanic Park as the animals are found nowhere else in the world.
The National Trust’s captive breeding program has released
a number of iguanas into the protected area of the Botanic Park and they are successfully reproducing there.
The National Trust points out that the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana is
a critically endangered species, and is protected by law.
The Blue Iguanas roaming free in the Botanic Park and the Salina
have been bred in captivity and released by the Trust’s Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, in an attempt to save this uniquely
Caymanian creature from extinction.
Every individual Blue Iguana is important to the future of the species.
Mature, established females such as Sapphire are especially valuable because over their extremely long lives, they have the
potential to produce hundreds of young.
Find out more about the Grand Cayman Blue Iguanas, and how you can
help them, by clicking www.blueiguana.ky | 
